EA, Nintendo, and Sony – Don’t do this – Revoke your Support of SOPA
Rushed products, online passes, and now this shit. If you’ve been living under a rock a bill called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) has been introduced into the United States House of Representatives with the aim at providing a critical strike to piracy. Unfortunately, like most legislation today, it’s poorly written and could and probably will have disastrous effects on all the sites you’ve come to love. Not only that, but sites like TheParanoidGamer could become collateral damage.
The internet is and always should be a haven for free-speech and use. Undoubtedly there’s an issue with piracy, however how far will the war go? According to experts, there’s really no limit. If SOPA manages to get passed, and ultimately gets signed into law, the internet as you know could be forever changed.
Don’t believe me?
Check out some of these videos:
A video covering SOPA.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwuXNv8fJM
Also a look at Protect IP, which is just as bad. This is currently in the Senate.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9oeJgrVrq0&feature=related
Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? EA, Nintendo, and Sony (along with its other labels) have come out to support SOPA. Obviously all three of the companies have a keen interest in fighting piracy, but at what cost? At this point, it’s unclear.
The worst part is that SOPA has a decent chance of passing. We ask that you stand up with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and several others in opposing this bill.
We also ask that EA, Nintendo, and Sony revoke their support of the bill.
Like Gabe Newell said:
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
We need your support though. Email each of the offending companies and ask for them to abolish their support for the bill. Also contact your local Senators and Congressmen/Congresswomen to make sure they’re voting against the bill.
For more information on SOPA and Protect IP visit the links below:
Overview of Protect IP Wikipedia
Daniel Flatt
December 18, 2011 @ 12:09 pm
I’m just being the Devil’s advocate here and saying how would it affect gaming in general or even paranoidgamer.com? Nothing I’ve read supports that idea, the whole bill is aimed primarily at pirating and blocking illegal sites set up overseas; many of which are scams or kiddy porn endeavors. In addition it obviously attempts to shut down sites due to pirating. And that is a bad thing why?
No matter what the 16 year old pimple face teh l337 hacker kid next door says, taking something that doesn’t belong to you is stealing. A lot of our youth see no problem with going online and simply taking an entire album, movies not even in stores yet and video games themselves. They use a million different excuses from the supplied one above of, Nintendo isn’t releasing it here so I’ll just steal it, to so and so company is not nice so I’m taking it.
Whether you take an album from a store or offline without paying for it that is stealing. Period the end. There is no moral grey area in that instance. It’s no different from walking into the store and putting it in your jacket and walking out.
Currently the internet is rampant with stealing and various filth makes it’s ways in front of everyone’s eyes. I think it’s being a little sensationalist to say it will damage the internet and I’m also hesitant to side with it’s completely OK to do this side. As politics usually is I’m sure the truth lines up somewhere down the middle.
Robert Strick
December 18, 2011 @ 12:25 pm
Unfortunately the bill is far to cryptic to be effective at dealing with piracy.
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
Look how much Steam dealt with piracy. Passing legislation that is loosely worded and even effects those overseas is highly inappropriate. The entertainment industry already has far too many bills favoring them.